The following descriptions and examples are not admitted to be prior art by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
In a variety of well related applications, an intelligent completion may be deployed downhole into a wellbore via a tubing or other conveyance. A surface rig may be employed to deliver the intelligent completion to a desired location in the wellbore. The intelligent completion comprises gauges that can be used to detect and measure a variety of well related parameters. In multizone wells, one or more gauges are positioned in each well zone to monitor parameters related to that specific zone. The gauges are connected by an instrumentation cable which extends to a control system located at the surface.
Segments of the instrumentation cable are connected or spliced between the various gauges in the intelligent completion. Conventionally, the splices are formed during online rig assembly time, however rig time is a valuable commodity and operation of the rig can result in substantial costs. Online rig assembly time, referred to as “online” is the operating time in which the critical path for a rig is governed by the tool assembly at substantial cost. In contrast, offline assembly time, referred to as “offline” is any equipment assembly time in which the critical path for the rig is not governed by the tool assembly. The offline time is much less expensive than the online time. Formation of the instrumentation cable splices substantially increases the online rig assembly time which, in turn, substantially increases the expense and the difficulty of deploying intelligent completions in the wellbore.